


Not In Name, Not In Body, Not In My Memory

by Soulhearts



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Amnesiac Bucky Barnes, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, sad Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 02:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7386277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulhearts/pseuds/Soulhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is it to be human? Bucky's not sure, but perhaps he still qualifies?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not In Name, Not In Body, Not In My Memory

What is it to be human? Is it the body? The knowledge that one has resided in the same vessel for their entire life? … Or is it the memories? The composition and number of memories one has, the way they unfold in a particular view that only one person has seen.

He isn't sure.

He sits and watches, and he, in return, is watched. He has few memories on which to rely, but his instincts he trusts. And he knows not to trust any of these people. Not the man with the eye-patch and serious expression, not the red-head whose Russian accent is cleverly disguised in layers of American-English―(though someone should tell her that her “L's” are still too forward for a New Yorker accent)―and certainly not the big, blonde, beefy one whose eyes always threaten to spill with emotion.

He remembers that one though. The blonde one. He… he knew him. He thinks he may have tried to kill him, but he's not sure why… the mission never tells him and his memories come back in bits and fragments that he hardly understands. Most times it never makes any sense at all, just a second here and a moment there, though the blonde one never stops trying to jog his memories.

“You hungry?” Asks the blonde one day, opening the locked door to his room with a card. “It's meatloaf today, just in case you were wondering.”

He sets the tray onto the floor, along with zero utensils.

“Sorry there's no fork, they wouldn't let me give you one after what happened last time.” The blonde's voice holds a sliver of regret, but he doesn't know or understand it, nor does he remember this “last time” the blonde refers to.

He scoots closer to the food and, when he's pretty sure the blonde isn't playing a cruel joke on him, he lunges for the tray and seizes it, hauling it back to the corner he's claimed as his sleeping place.

The blonde just looks sad as he watches. Which of course, makes _him_ feel bad. He doesn't really talk with the blonde, it's more like the other way around. The red-head and the eye-patch both interrogate him, but the blonde never asks any hard questions. He simply looks sad when he hears the words, “ _I don't know_ ”. Perhaps he should try harder. He should talk to the blonde, enquire about his status. He finds himself thinking about the blonde often enough.

“What happened last time?” He asks between mouthfuls, his voice gravelly and sore.

The blond wears that perpetual expression of sadness again.

“You don't remember?”

He shakes his head. Is he supposed to?

“Oh, Buck…” The blonde looks like he's about to cry and he suddenly feels a horrible twist of guilt in his stomach, though he isn't sure why.

Who is 'Buck'? Is this him? There is no one else in the room, so it seems okay to assume this. He's pretty sure the blonde won't punish him if he is wrong. The blonde has never punished him, not as far as he can remember, but he instinctively knows what it feels like. It feels like helplessly drowning and fire exploding from the back of his eyeballs, it feels like an electric current scorching his every cell, it feels like vocal chords tearing and rasping breaths that still somehow leave him breathless, it feels like knife wounds in his gut, nerves snapping with audible twangs.

“I'm s-sorry…” he manages to stutter, he himself unsure as to why he is apologising, but needing to all the same.

“No, Bucky, don't apologise to me. It's not your fault and I'm… I'm sure I'm only making this harder…”

“You're not!” He accidentally blurts. “I mean… you… make it easier.”

There's silence for a minute, the blonde wears a quizzical expression not dissimilar to that of an owl.

“I remember you sometimes,” he admits, abandoning his meatloaf. “You… you're in some of my dreams too… but sometimes you're really small so… I don't know if it's really you.”

To his amazement, beefy-blonde laughs.

“Yeah Buck,” he smiles, the broadest smile he's ever seen. “That's me! I was small once, much smaller than you.”

“It's real?” He breathes, still shocked over the smile that lit up the blonde's face. He didn't even know the blonde one _could_ smile like that, he thought the blonde could only look sad and wear depressed, bitter smiles.

“Yes.” Says the blonde.

“And…” he's not sure he wants to ask the next question, but he's on a roll so, what the hell. “Am I… Am I 'Bucky'?”

The blonde smiles again, thought its somewhat more despondent than the previous one.

“Yes, you're Bucky, Bucky Barnes.”

“That is my name?”

“Yeah.”

He goes silent for a minute, pondering this.

He has a name. That is useful information. It makes him feel… hopeful.

His attention snaps back up, apparently startling the blonde who had been watching him closely.

“Do you have a name?” He challenges, needing to know.

“Steve,” says the other, not missing a beat at all. “Steve Rogers.”

He knows that name sounds familiar, he knows it, but he cannot place where he heard it. Perhaps it was in a dream? Or maybe someone said it in passing as the traipsed past his door.

“It is nice to meet you, Steve Rogers.” He says, the corners of his mouth twitching. His hand juts itself out of it's own accord and Steve takes it, like it's some sort of code they used to know and have now forgotten in mind, but not in body.

“It's nice to meet you too, Bucky.”

It's nice to have a name―even if he doesn't remember anyone using it―and it's nice to have a body, a body which he is starting to think belongs to him. And there are some memories. Not many, he'll admit, but enough for him to believe that maybe, _maybe_ , he has enough to qualify for the title of 'human'.

 

~fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. 
> 
> Honestly, it's been an awfully long time since I found the will to write. I haven't written anything I've planned to publish on AO3 in months because nothing I write seems good enough to me. Even this I nearly scraped three times. But I persisted. I kept telling myself I would write something when a good enough idea came along, and I thought it was okay to live like that, but I became annoyed at myself. I found myself feeling complacent. This was my first step. And I'm glad I took it, even if I still feel like it really isn't worth much.
> 
> Maybe now I will find the will to edit some of the other things I've haphazardly written over the course of the last six months, perhaps even put them out for the world to see.
> 
> Sorry about this long rant! 
> 
> Much Love,  
> Soulhearts


End file.
